It’s not exactly a secret that Republican officials are practically begging Donald Trump to steer clear of personal attacks and focus on substantive issues. It’s also plainly true that the former president doesn’t care for the advice.
The results have been predictable: The GOP candidate has gone after Vice President Kamala Harris’ intellect, gender, laugh, family, appearance, and race and ethnicity, among other things.
At a long and meandering press conference last week, Trump went so far as to say he felt “entitled“ to go after his Democratic rival in personal ways.
To be sure, there’s little evidence to suggest these attacks are working. The former president has even complained publicly that he hasn’t quite figured out how to apply a nickname to Harris that’s stuck. But as a New York Times report noted, Republicans waiting for Trump to abandon the personal attacks and run as a serious candidate should probably give up.
After two days of policy-focused addresses with modest crowds, former President Donald J. Trump returned to form on Wednesday with an outdoor speech in North Carolina, where he insisted that he would not give up personal attacks on Vice President Kamala Harris and continued to sow doubts about the integrity of the election in November.
In remarks that were ostensibly about national security, the former president went after President Joe Biden, House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Harris in personal ways. In fact, Trump used the opportunity to tell his followers that he believes the Democratic nominee is both “stupid” and a “Marxist or a communist.”
Apparently trying to rationalize his strategy, the Republican acknowledged the behind-the-scenes advice he’s received. “They always say, ‘Sir, please stick to policy. Don’t get personal,’” Trump said. “And yet they’re getting personal all night long, these people. Do I still have to stick to policy?”
On cue, the crowd responded, “No.”
At the same event, the candidate polled his audience, which agreed with their applause that Trump should “get personal” against his opponents. It was at that point when he joked, “My advisers are fired.”
The point, of course, isn’t that Trump is going to fire his campaign team. Rather, the point is that his rhetoric was a big hint about what’s to come.
In fact, given the larger context, it’s likely that the former president doesn’t just want to engage in personal attacks — this is, after all, his comfort zone — he also thinks he has to engage in personal attacks.
Polling suggests he’s falling behind Harris; the Democratic convention has gone quite well for the party thus far; and the GOP nominee is increasingly looking for an electoral life-preserver. As The New Republic’s Greg Sargent summarized, Trump genuinely seems to think that Harris’ surge in the polls “is somehow the result of him being constrained from going full gutter MAGA on her.”
All of which suggests the American electorate should expect to see the Republican take the presidential race in an even uglier direction over the next 10 or so weeks.
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